Daily Archives: May 13, 2008

My friends had a bbq at their place, and they bought a new grill for the occasion. They asked me if I wanted their old one, and then just gave it to me! Nice, huh? It’s an Aussie Bushman Elite, and it is my new favorite thing in the world. First of all, I love the audacity of the name. It takes balls to name a propane fueled grill after a group of Aborigines. Sure, they were bushmen. They figured out how to live by making fire with two pieces of wood and their hands. But had they just gone that one step further and mastered electricity, steel manufacturing, sheet metal pressing, propane storage, and the push-button ignition, they could have been elite bushmen.

Anyway, for this dish I marinated some chicken breasts over night in a mix of Wonnie’s spicy hot korean bbq sauce and House of Tsang regular stir fry sauce. You can get both at the regular grocery store, and any stir fry nonsense will work. I find the Wonnie’s too be a bit too heavy on the heat so I mix it up. Once upon a time I was into making things as hot as humanly possible and then some, but nowadays I’m kind of getting into the whole “flavor” thing. Maybe I’m old.

So I grilled the chicken breasts on the Aussie, and then just chopped ’em up and put ’em over a bed of spring mix from a bag in the produce section. I cut up some orange sections and added red grape tomatoes. If I had some orange grape tomatoes and scallions I’d have used those too. Top with some crunchy chow mein noodles.

This is basically a variation on a salad my sister makes. She puts goat cheese in it, which I love. So I wanted to do that, but the first few times I made my own dressing and it sort of melted all the goat cheese. Then I thought, why not put the goat cheese in the dressing? I know it’s that kind of dangerous thinking that will get me in trouble one day, but I went for it anyway. I’m hard core.

I don’t measure anything, by the way. You should know that right up front. So if you’re upset that I haven’t provided measurements here, sorry. You’ll just have to keep tinkering with it until it tastes right. It’ll be good for you to loosen up a little.

The amounts below made enough for two people, or one person who likes a LOT of dressing. You can always make too much and refrigerate it.

Sesame seed oil – I’d say several tablespoons
Pineapple vinegar – slightly less than the amount of sesame oil used. You can get this in the Asian foods aisle, near the stir fry sauce
Goat cheese – about half of one of those small tubular packages is what I used.
Brown sugar – to taste. I would add this last, about a teaspoon at a time until it’s not too tart
Oregano – to taste
Tarragon – same
Ginger – dried powdered kind, to taste

I used one of those “salad magic” carafe thingies you get when you buy the dry package Italian dressing. I shook it vigorously after adding each ingredient, and kept tasting it. The goat cheese will “creamify” (new word) in there if you shake the s#$t out of it. The herbs you can add, omit, or use something else.

What makes this dressing “Gaysian,” you ask? Goat cheese + Asian = funny word. Plus you have to admit, it doesn’t get much gayer than making your own goat cheese salad dressing. It works on so many levels!